WO 2007/057850 discloses a method for using content metadata associated with a sequence of at least one image to provide audio accompaniment therefor, comprising the steps of locating matching audio accompaniments in a database, using the content metadata associated with the sequence, and providing the located audio accompaniment as accompaniment for the sequence. In a preferred embodiment, digital image content and characteristics provided by a user are used to derive textual labels (image metadata), which can be a keyphrase comprising at least one keyword derived from a user-specified image name/label or a keyphrase derived from a textual annotation of the image. An audio accompaniment database is provided that has been previously annotated (indexed) with standardised audio accompaniment metadata. An image metadata capture/creation module receives an image, an image sequence and metadata describing the image and the image sequence. The metadata input by the user is captured by the module as well as created by the module through image analysis. A search/association module searches a database for suitable audio accompaniments based on the metadata, and a suggestion/play module at least suggests a playlist or plays a most relevant audio accompaniment resulting from the search.
The known method is static: it is based on previous indexing, usually by a relatively small group of test persons—and is more difficult to implement for types of accompaniment other than audio accompaniments comprising songs with lyrics.